As known in the art, any number of virtual machines may be executing upon a hypervisor upon a host computer. A service (or security) virtual machine is used to provide protection for any of the other virtual machines executing upon the host computer. But, only a single communication channel is used between the hypervisor and the service virtual machine in prior art architectures. If there is a problem with either the service virtual machine or with the communication channel then the performance of the other virtual machines will be reduced or halted. For example, the service virtual machine may be performing as a gateway, as an anti-malware device, or as a firewall. Because there is only one service virtual machine, there is a single point of failure which is undesirable.
Additionally, a separate problem might occur within the communication channel itself. Because the communication channel includes different components, should one component fail then a virtual machine is prevented from communicating with the service virtual machine. Thus, it would be desirable to reduce the downtime associated with failure of the service virtual machine or of its communication channel.